News

Long Beach school board to vote on closing James Monroe K-8 in Lakewood

By Greg Mellen Staff Writer

Posted:
12/03/2012 07:38:51 PM PST

Updated:
12/03/2012 08:20:54 PM PST

Kindergartener Silas Garland leaves class at Monroe School in Lakewood, Calif., on December 3, 2012. The Long Beach Unified School District will vote Wednesday night on a plan to close the school. (Jeff Gritchen / Staff Photographer)

LAKEWOOD - On Monday afternoon as the 3:10 p.m. bells signal the end the school day, the air around the James Monroe K-8 school is filled with the pell-mell shouts of students.

If the Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education follows through on a staff recommendation, those shouts will be silenced after the end of the school year. The board will decide today at its regular meeting whether to shutter the K-8 school at 4400 Ladoga Ave. as the district seeks to trim about $20 million from its budget.

Also on the block at today's 5 p.m. meeting at 1515 Hughes Way is a plan to eliminate grades six through eight at the David Burcham K-8 School.

Predictably, the planned closure of Monroe didn't sit well with neighborhood parents, many of whom walked to pick up their children.

"I'm very upset," said Nina Mighaccio, a member of the school's Parent Teacher Student Association, as she picked up her daughter, Savannah.

Like a number of other parents, she bought a house close to the school, specifically so her child could attend the same school through eighth grade in the proximity of her home.

"Pretty much there's nothing we can do," Mighaccio said. "If I thought slamming my fist on the table (at tonight's meeting) would do any good, I would do it."

The activist parent said she recently abandoned her attempts to keep the school opened when she learned closure was essentially a foregone conclusion.

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Mighaccio said she felt worst for the children in the seventh grade, who would be uprooted and unable to graduate with their classmates.

David and Tracy Larsen live within a five-minute walk of the school and said they had hoped their son, Hunter, would be able to continue to go to school in what they said is a "nice, safe neighborhood" and one day be able to walk or ride a bike to school.

Under the proposal, the Monroe school boundaries would be integrated into the Cleveland Elementary and Bancroft Middle schools' boundaries. However, parents said they were told they would have other options for where they could send their children.

Like Mighaccio, they bought their home in part because of its proximity to the school. David Larsen also worries whether the conversion of the school will lower property values.

Megan Carroll attended Monroe as a child and was looking forward to her son Logan attending her alma mater.

"I'm still in shock," she said. "One of the things I really liked was the gardening program and a lot of the extracurricular activities that have now fallen away."

District officials say school closures are unavoidable.

"Sadly, the combination of lean budget and reduced enrollment forces us to close smaller schools," said Chris Eftychiou, spokesman for the district.

Eftychiou said with 678 students, Monroe is the smallest of Long Beach's 11 K-8 schools.

However, he added that was just one of the considerations in the closure. According to the district, Monroe and Burcham have low numbers of neighborhood students. Monroe, which was opened in 1953, has just 162 from its immediate neighborhood. Of Burcham's 186 students in grades six through eight, 55 live within the school neighborhood.

The district said it also has nearby schools able to handle the displaced kids and changes in school transportation also affected the decision.

There is also the ongoing problem of shrinking school bodies.

Enrollment in Long Beach schools has dropped by 16,000 students in the past decade, officials say. About 81,000 students now attend LBUSD schools.

Officials said the two moves will save about $3.5 million.

The district also tried to quell a rumor that Monroe would be converted into an adult continuation school.

"Contrary to a flier that has been circulated in the Monroe neighborhood, we will not convert Monroe to a continuation high school, nor was such a plan proposed," Superintendent Chris Steinhauser wrote in a letter to area parents.

Among the proposed uses for Monroe is a home to the district's three-person Personnel Commission and support staff.

Such considerations are scant comfort for the parents and children who have become attached to Monroe.

Mighaccio says every time she drives with her child past the school, Savannah points it out with pride and talks about being a Tiger, the school mascot.

When the closure was first announced, Mighaccio said the PTSA, which has worked to fix up the school, was hard hit.

"We felt really defeated," Mighaccio said, as she became choked with emotion. "But we have to carry on and make this the best year for Monroe. Hopefully we can send the kids out with something memorable."